June 8, 2007
The family trip, until Sunday morning, was going quite well. It was awkward, and probably hilarious to outsiders, trying to get all seven of us to agree on anything. Not, oddly, because we disagreed, but because we were all so desperate to be agreeable, no one would make a decision or state an opinion. But everything was quite pleasant and we were thoroughly enjoying Scotland and having a good time, until Papa's knee seized in the middle of the night.
Being descended from some Scots, he decided to "tough it out" (he's insanely stubborn and didn't want to inconvience us), so we drove out of Scotland to England to look at Hadrian's wall. Except we only got to Haltwistle, the nearest village with an information center before driving out to the wall, when Papa realized the pain just wasn't endurable. We ended up about 10 miles away in Hexham, at the hospial (Haltwhistle's apparently being too small to have an x-ray machine), where the ubiquitous "they" of the medical world decided he probably had an infection in his "new" knee (replaced in October). So Papa got to travel by ambulance to Wansbeck hospital, about 15 miles outside of Newcastle, Sunday evening, and he's still there. They've opened him up and flushed the knee and he's on course for 6 weeks of antibiotics. It's a staph infection and they have no idea if the antibiotics will kill it all, but everyone seems pretty sanguine. Hospital people are currently facilitating medical transport home, which would provide for a nurse to accompany Papa, though we're unclear on all the other details. It might be early next week that he goes home, which is what the doctors want, but who knows what the insurance will throw back next.
In the meantime Irene, Eleanor and Megan have taken the second of two cars we rented, back to Edinburgh to catch their flights Wednesday and yesterday. The poor things have jobs, if you can believe it! Mama, David and and I are comfortably ensconced in a cottage in the middle of someone's farm (sheep, mostly), which is run through this really neat program called Farm Stay. We'd enjoy it more if we weren't at the hospital most of the day, or if Papa were able to come back with us, but we've spent three very pleasant, peaceful evenings in the living room in front of the gas fire, reading our books and callously drinking Papa's whiskey cream liquor. If only it didn't take a hospital stay to slow us all down.
